Surface Tension, Wetting & Capillarity
Course - GBP 795, Euro 995
Tuesday 8th - Wednesday 9th July, 2008

imperial College, London, England

Conference registration

Location, directions and accommodation
COURSE FOCUS
This course will present the concepts and measurement techniques that are required in order to understand how surface tension, wetting, and capillarity affect printing processes. The first goal will be to develop the understanding of surface tension and interfacial tension, which are essential properties of the materials involved in printing systems (eg. ink, plastic substrates, paper). Then, the various modes of wetting and capillary penetration, which are basic processes underlying most printing operations, will be discussed.

Intended audience
This course is directly relevant to anyone working in the fields of ink jet ink formulation and development, substrate development - such as papers, films, coatings and metal and glass substrates - and the design and development of ink jet printheads.

COURSE LEADER
Professor Abraham Marmur
Department of Chemical Engineering
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa, Israel

Professor Abraham Marmur received his PhD in 1974 from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Then he spent two years as a post-doc at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Later he was a visiting associate professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and a visiting scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center.

Professor Marmur has been working in the field of interfacial phenomena and wetting for over thirty years. He has published many papers on the theory and practice of wetting processes, and has been consulting for major companies involved in the design and utilization of ink jet printing systems.

He has also participated in many international conferences and has been active in lecturing on interfacial phenomena in universities and industrial sites in many countries. At Technion, Professor Marmur received awards for excellence in research and in teaching. In addition, Professor Marmur was an editor of Reviews in Chemical Engineering, and was on the advisory committee of Journal of Colloid and Interface Science and Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology.

Course outline
Tuesday 8th July 2008

10:00 - 11:00 am Registration
11:00 am Course begins

INTRODUCTION

SURFACES AND INTERFACES

SURFACE TENSION AND INTERFACIAL TENSION
• Models of interfaces
• Units and typical values
• Temperature dependence

1:00 - 2:00 pm Lunch

SHAPES OF DROPS AND BUBBLES
• The Young-Laplace equation
• Applications of the Young-Laplace equation
• Very small drops and bubbles

SURFACE TENSION MEASUREMENT
• Force methods
• Maximum bubble pressure
• Shape methods

WETTING ON SURFACES

CONTACT ANGLES – THEORY AND MEASUREMENT
• Contact angles on ideal surfaces
• Contact angles on real surfaces
• Contact angle measurement

5:30 pm Adjournment
6:00 - 7:30 pm Reception

Wednesday 9th July 2008

9:00 am Course begins

CONTACT ANGLE HYSTERESIS
• The hysteresis concept
• The mechanism of contact angle hysteresis
• Implications to measurement

DYNAMIC WETTING PHENOMENA
• Phenomenology
• Kinetics of wetting
• Wetting by liquid mixtures
• Wetting by surfactant solutions
• Wetting of rough surfaces

1:00 – 2:00 pm Lunch

WETTING IN POROUS MEDIA

LIQUID PENETRATION INTO CAPILLARIES
• Mechanism of penetration
• Height of rise and kinetics of penetration
• Penetration of small drops

LIQUID PENETRATION INTO POROUS MEDIA
• Height of rise
• Penetration of small drops into paper

CHARACTERISATION OF POROUS MEDIA
• Kinetics of horizontal flow
• Kinetics of vertical flow

4:00 pm Adjournment